The first release was based on Red Hat Linux (version 5.1) and K Desktop Environment 1 in July 1998. It has since moved away from Red Hat's distribution and has become a completely separate distribution in its own right. Mandriva now includes a number of original tools, mostly to ease system configuration. Mandriva Linux is the brainchild of Gaël Duval, who wanted to focus on ease of use for new users. Duval became the co-founder of Mandrakesoft, but was laid off from the company in 2006 along with many other employees.

Mandriva is now a commercial operating system. Free versions are no longer available. Mandriva provides multiple editions of Linux. Some were freely distributable until 2012, while now they are only sold online and via a network of authorized resellers. Prior open source code of the old Mandriva Free was later forked into free derivatives like Mageia and OpenMandriva Lx.

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